Automotive News - September 15, 2008 - 270

General Motors Story 86 /100 After long slide, Olds died in ’04 The lesson: Brands that lose identity and don’t stay fresh are living on borrowed time Rick Kranz ore than a thousand antique and nearly antique Oldsmobiles snaked through downtown Lansing, Mich. The parade marking Oldsmobile’s 100th anniversary drew thousands of enthusiasts on that hot, sunny August day in 1997. Rolling slowly down the street were Curved Dash models from the beginning of the last century, touring models and sedans from the 1920s and 1930s and the more familiar Ninety Eights, Starfires, F-85s, Toronados and Cutlass Supremes. But nothing could hide the fact that Oldsmobile was in trouble. Sales for 1996 totaled just 331,287 vehicles, a far cry from the million-plus years of 1984, 1985 and 1986. Many of Oldsmobile’s former buyers now drove Japanese imports. Oldsmobile was still trying to shake off the effects of a 1992 Washington Post story that reported General Motors had been giving serious consideration that year to killing the brand. GM and Oldsmobile denied the story vigorously, but the seed of doubt had been planted in buyers’ minds. But that was just one issue that hurt the Oldsmobile brand. “There were a lot of little elements. If you take a look at them and add them all up, it made the road back to success for Oldsmobile pretty difficult,” said Gus Buenz, Oldsmobile’s director of communications from 1987 until 2003. © GM Corp. photos M A century of Oldsmobile 1897: Ransom Olds built his first car. 1908: Billy Durant bought Oldsmobile for GM. 1939: Olds was first with automatic transmission. 1966: Front-drive Toronado introduced. 1967: The first Cutlass Supreme went on sale. 1983-86: Annual sales topped 1 million. 2000: GM decided to kill Olds. 2004: The curtain fell. drive 1988 Cutlass Supreme coupe and shake up the brand’s stogy image, Oldsmobile launched an ad campaign with the slogan, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” “They were trying to communicate that Olds was building a different kind of car,” said Buenz. Instead, sales slid. “It totally misread the loyalty of our buyers,” Buenz said. “Oldsmobile had a very loyal customer base, obviously getting older, but very loyal. So that upset our customers.” Additionally, it is true that the fwd Cutlass Supreme “was a different type of Oldsmobile, but the rest of the product line was still your father’s Oldsmobile,” Buenz said. Sales dropped to 602,159 in 1989 from 715,270 the previous year. Mike Losh replaced Lane as general manager in June 1989. Sales continued to slide, ending 1992 with 416,126. In April of that year, John Rock succeeded Losh as Oldsmobile general manager. The redesigned 1988 Cutlass Supreme was launched with what became a controversial tag line: “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.” Neither generation was very impressed. “The corporation viewed us as sort of the conservative family car (so you) don’t need to change anything. That was a misconception.” — Ted Louckes, retired Oldsmobile chief engineer were merely heading a marketing and sales organization. “Oldsmobile had been so self-contained” before the GM reorganization, James Rucker, a former assistant controller, said in an interview for the book Setting the Pace: Oldsmobile’s First 100 Years. “Oldsmobile built its reputation on being a complete car company — our engine, our body, our Oldsmobile. With B-O-C, Olds had to depend on (others) to engineer products, to make products.” The result was a cookie-cutter approach to vehicle development in order to reduce GM’s costs. Additionally, Oldsmobile engineers wrestled with product teams that ignored their input. “The corporation viewed us as sort of the conservative family car (so you) don’t need to change anything. That was a misconception,” said Ted Louckes, a former Oldsmobile chief engineer who was interviewed for Setting the Pace. “If you go back and look at studies that said we were going to have this problem, they were fulfilled because nobody reacted.” A fateful day Jan. 10, 1984, was a fateful day for Oldsmobile and GM’s other vehicle divisions. Chairman Roger Smith announced a wide-ranging reorganization of GM’s vehicle development process. In place of independent divisions, GM was reorganized into two vehicle development groups: Chevrolet, Pontiac and Canada, known as C-P-C; and Buick, Oldsmobile and Cadillac, known as B-O-C. In January 1985, Bill Lane was named Oldsmobile general manager. Under Smith’s reorganization, the job of general manager at Oldsmobile and the other vehicle divisions had little resemblance to the previous position. Lane and the other general managers The Centennial Plan Six months after Rock arrived, a bomb fell. GM was wrestling with serious financial problems in 1992. The company denied reports that it would file for Chapter 11 reorganization. Speculation was escalating about whether Oldsmobile would be the casualty of a smaller GM, one of several measures to make the company profitable. In October 1992, a GM insider told The Washington Post that the board of directors was reviewing a proposal to drop Oldsmobile. GM The ad that failed In 1986, Oldsmobile sold 1,059,390 cars — vehicles essentially developed when Olds was a separate division. It had no trucks. In 1991, Oldsmobile sold 458,124 vehicles — including the Bravada, essentially a rebadged GMC Jimmy, and the odd-looking Silhouette minivan, essentially a rebadged Chevrolet Lumina APV. There were other missteps. To introduce the redesigned, front-wheel- Oldsmobile rocked under feisty John Rock ohn his Bystanders knew exactly was on Jmind.Rock didn’t sugarcoatwhatopinions. his The brash and feisty Rock, Oldsmobile’s general manager from April 1992 to October 1996, was born in Groton, S.D., in 1936. He worked in his father’s ChevroletOldsmobile dealership and joined General Motors in 1960 as a Buick manager trainee. “He was a lot of fun, and he was very straightforward,” said Gus Buenz, director of Oldsmobile communications from 1987 to 2003. “He would make a point with little stories and analogies. He was just brilliant at that.” Here are a few examples: Rock had just been transferred to Oldsmobile and was looking for a house in the Lansing, Mich., area, where Oldsmobile was based. He was commuting from the Detroit area to Lansing and meeting Fridays with the Oldsmobile staff, Buenz said. In one of his first meetings with the Oldsmobile team, Rock mentioned he was looking for a house. Buenz said Rock told the staff: “Obviously, I can afford a pretty nice house. I’ve been 270 September 15, 2008 John Rock, right, and Jack Smith in 1997 looking in a lot of garages, and I don’t see a lot of Oldsmobiles. I just want to tell you, folks, you’ve got to be a hero in your hometown before you can be a hero anywhere else.” Six months after Rock became general manager, he and Oldsmobile were shaken by a Washington Post story that said, because of poor sales, GM’s directors were seriously considering killing the brand. Rock “did a teleconference to all our dealers and GM offices the afternoon following the story,” Buenz said. “We were having lunch prior to that, and Rock said, ‘You know, I think I’ll just get up there and tell them, you’re looking at one pissed-off cowboy.’ ” Everybody laughed and “we didn’t think anything about it,” said Buenz. But to everyone’s surprise, “that is exactly how he opened the teleconference.” Rock said, “You know, you are looking at one pissed-off cowboy because somebody is trying to shoot my horse, and I don’t know who.” In a 2006 Motor Trend interview, Rock was asked whether he had known Oldsmobile was headed for extinction. “When (Ron) Zarrella called me in September 1996, he said, ‘John, you know I just don’t see anything at Oldsmobile that makes me comfortable.’ “I said: ‘Well, everything I have in my life comes from General Motors. My father was a dealer for 40 years. It’s the only job I ever had. The one thing I’m not going to do is get into a pissing contest with my boss. And the next thing I’m not going to do is get ornery and sit in the corner and count paper clips for a couple of years.’ “I said, ‘If you want my ass out of here, I’d gladly do that.’ So we shook hands and probably were the friendliest we ever were.” Rock directed the creation of the Oldsmobile Centennial Plan. It was an effort to reinvent the brand’s image and much of the product line by 1997, Oldsmobile’s centennial year. The plan also adopted many of Saturn’s business practices and customer care policies. Under consideration in 1993 was whether Oldsmobile should drop its longtime ad agency, Leo Burnett USA, and go in a different direction. Burnett and its predecessor had had the account since 1934. Contacted by this reporter on the day in December 2000 when GM announced it was discontinuing the Oldsmobile brand, Rock said he had one regret: that he didn’t fire the Burnett agency in 1993. Said Rock, speaking from his ranch in South Dakota: “I had them in the target and let them off the hook. It is the biggest mistake I ever made. I’m not mad, I’m sad.” John Rock died in 2007. He was 71. — Rick Kranz AUTOMOTIVE NEWS

Automotive News - September 15, 2008

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